MichiganRadio

Detroit Considers Downsizing to Survive DETROIT, MI (Michigan Radio) - The neighborhood where Elaine Lovett lives looks like a lot of Detroit. There are some well-kept homes, like hers. But not too far away, there are blocks with more vacant lots than standing homes. Some of the houses are abandoned eyesores. And the school across the street from Lovett is one of dozens slated to close this year.

Lovett has lived in this neighborhood since 1965. But she says, with the right incentives, she would happily move.

"If that's what they want to do with this area, fine. Buy me out of my upside-down mortgage and let me go," she says.

At one time, Detroit was the country's fourth largest city. Nearly two million people once called it home.

But today, the Motor City has fewer than half the people it did at its peak.

Detroit still spends more nearly three billion dollars a year to provide city services. But many neighborhoods are largely abandoned.

So officials are considering a radical idea - shut down whole areas of the city, and move residents from decaying neighborhoods to more viable ones.

It's not clear what neighborhoods city officials might want to bulldoze. There's no plan yet that spells out how many families could be asked to move, or how much money the city might save by shutting off streetlights, scaling back trash pick-up, and cutting back on police and fire runs.

And Elaine Lovett says she doesn't understand how a city as broke as Detroit could afford to relocate homeowners like her.

"Fair market value for this house right now is about one-third of what it actually sold to me for," Lovett says. "So who's going to take that mortgage?"

And money won't be the only challenge. John Mogk teaches law at Wayne State University. He says there will certainly be some people who won't want to leave their homes. And that could mean using eminent domain to force them out.

"In 2006 the state of Michigan amended its state Constitution, and it prohibited the use of eminent domain for economic development," says Mogk. "It also made it difficult to clear blighted neighborhoods."

Mogk says those changes could mean more litigation, and higher relocation costs.

There could also be a political cost. Many residents have painful memories of Detroit's previous attempts at urban renewal, including Ron Scott. His family was forced to relocate twice in the 1960s - first to make way for a new housing development, and again when planners decided to build Interstate 75.

Scott says this latest idea sounds no different.

"As far as I see, it's just like the old reservations," he says. "You tell the Native Americans we're going to give you land somewhere else, and you move them somewhere else, and there's no clear understanding of what's going to happen."

But supporters of shrinking Detroit say the city has to think radically different about its approach to land use. And they say they expect many people would willingly relocate.

Sam Butler is the head of Creekside Community Development Corporation. That's a non-profit housing organization on Detroit's east side.

Butler's group and several others spent more than a year putting together a framework for how Detroit might re-envision neighborhoods like this one.

"You're on a street where there is a lot of vacancy, and we're standing in front of a house that's obviously abandoned," he says. It's the site of a lot of illegal dumping. There's been fire damage to the house. I mean, it's a pretty severe case of blight."

Down the street on both sides is about a hundred yards of vacant, open space. So Butler says this block might be a good candidate for reverting back to nature.

But there's also one well-kept home on the block, with brand-new siding, and a porch swing out front. And Butler says the family in that house - if they didn't want to relocate - could have what he calls an "urban homestead."

"The best way to think about it is country living in the city," says Butler. "It's more of a rural lifestyle, you maybe have an acre or two between you and your closest neighbor. And maybe we work out options where the road converts to a gravel road. Similarly, there's some areas in the city that might be amenable to well water. And you just explain those options to people."

Detroit isn't the first Rust Belt city to try contracting. After its steel mills closed and many residents fled, Youngstown, Ohio began offering incentives for people to move out of decaying neighborhoods.

But five years since the plan was adopted, not a single resident has taken the $50,000 relocation incentive.

Contact Sarah Hulett at sarahhu@umich.edu © Copyright 2012, Michigan Radio